INTERVIEW
Brian Colin
Contributor
to many outstanding products including Discs of Tron and
Star Trek Voyager! The partner
of Jeff Nauman for almost two decades at Game Refuge.
MT>
The games you've created over the years all have a comedic theme,
which you' ve branded as a "Laugh-out-Loud" video game entertainment.
Obviously humor is very important to you, Jeff Nauman, and the
rest of the crew at Games Refuge. Have you ever considered creating
a serious type game?
BC> "Dying is easy. Comedy is hard" (Peter O'Toole as
Allen Swan, MY FAVORITE YEAR)
We take "Having Fun" very seriously here at Game Refuge. We view
games, first and foremost, as entertainment. (if the player
isn't having fun, what's the point?) If by "serious" you mean
a game devoid of laughs, or a game that otherwise takes itself
too seriously, then no, we probably won't.
MT>
You created the graphics for the exceptional Discs of Tron.
Impressively the sit-down casing design melded seamlessly with
the on-screen graphics. What was it like creating graphic images
that mimicked such a highly graphical stylized movie, and were
there discussions concerning the booth and your work?
BC>
Don't give me too much credit here. While I did do most of the
video graphics and animation for Discs of Tron,
the project was well defined before I arrived on the scene. Much
of the credit for the overall look of that "seamless" package
goes to mechanical designer George Gomez; currently a pinball
designer for WMS.
MT>
Game Refuge displays at least 3 games which were never released
within the arcades. Please tell us about Antraid: The Spectre
Files, P'Tooie Louie, and Wild Pitch.
BC>
It seems to be one of the underlying Truths of game design: if
successful games make the most money, then unsuccessful games
make the best anecdotes. The corollary to that Truth is that the
best anecdotes make somebody look ridiculous, and therefore are
best if they come from an anonymous source. Having said that,
I hear that the following stories may be true:
The Spectre Files was a campy, feature-length interactive
horror film that we wrote, produced and directed on a shoestring
budget (for a Major Arcade Manufacturer Who Shall Remain Nameless)
on location in an abandoned, unheated, lunatic asylum during one
of the coldest Februarys in Chigago history. (How cold was it?
Well, we had to do very short "takes", since the heat from the
lights would eventually melt the frost on the ceilings, and the
resulting sprinkle would re-freeze on the way down.... a charming
snow-like effect that didn't help our interior scenes very much.)
The film was to be the basis of the company's first in-house Laser
Disc Game; but somewhere along the way the company decided that
video disc, not laser disc, was the wave of the future. For those
of you who don't remember video disc, it had a needle that tracked
in a groove similar to a phonograph record. ("Uh-oh", you say,
"I can see where this is going...") Just prior to The Spectre
File's completion, the company released a Football Game
using Video Disc technology and discovered that the first time
the game got bumped or jostled, the resulting scratched disc effectively
turned the game into a 300 pound paperweight. The company decided
that there was no future in disc-based games of any kind, and
The Spectre Files game was never completed.
Antraid was the forerunner to every Real-Time-Strategy
game ever made. A great two-player, head-to-head game, each player
controlled a colony of a couple o' dozen ants, each with their
own unique abilities. The ants then battled over limited amounts
of food in a garbage dump. It had better-than-average Field Test
results, but nothing close to some of the company's (a Major Arcade
Manufacturer Who Shall Remain Nameless) better games at the time,
so it was never produced.
P'Tooie Louie... A Bikini clad cave-girl who rides
atop an enormous watermelon-seed spitting bird fighting deadly,
mostly-invisible(!), Bee People. Sometimes you get so caught up
in seeing if you can achieve something, it doesn't occur
to you to ask yourself if you should. Lesson learned; `nuff
said.
Wild Pitch. I wanted to do kind of an "Archrivals
Baseball" thing, with comic characters and idiot-proof controls...
the company brass (yet another Major Arcade Manufacturer Who Shall
Remain Nameless ) wanted us to include all of the features, statistics
and detail of the most popular Home Console Baseball games of
the time, yet still take only 90 seconds to play... the marketing
guys wanted us to use a Major League Baseball license... Major
League Baseball and the Players Association wanted us to refrain
from doing anything "irreverent"... and there was one senior exec
who insisted that, historically, Baseball Games had proven to
be "ill-suited" for the arcade. In retrospect, we probably should
have known from the start that there was no way to make everybody
happy with the game; yet we tried for a long time to do just that.
Eventually, though the game turned out to be a great deal of fun
to play, it just wasn't an "Arcade Product". (It has the dubious
distinction of being the lowest-earning game of the company's
Mid-Winter Field Test that year.) Oddly enough, when we take our
Mobile Arcade to summertime street festivals, our Wild Pitch
game is easily the most popular, highest earning game in our collection.
Go figure
MT>
Your game Pigskin 621AD was reprogrammed for the
Sega Genesis and renamed Jerry Glanville's Pigskin Footbrawl.
Did you ever see this version, and what were your opinions of
this rendition?
BC>
Yes, I saw it... and I was disappointed to see that, instead of
converting or re-creating the game graphics for the different
aspect ratio of the Genesis System, they just used art straight
from the arcade version... resulting in characters that looked
stretched and disturbingly bizarre.
MT>
Any comedic anecdotes or nightmare stories you could share dealing
with Electronic Arts, Williams, 3DO, Bally/Midway, American Laser
Games, or others?
BC>Funny?
Well sure.
There's the story of the Transplanted Small Town Animator that
Moved To The Chicago Area who, during a company outing at the
Dunes National Lakeshore, tried to swim across Lake Michigan as
if it were a fishin' hole... and his subsequent rescue by a half-dozen
panic-stricken co-workers. Or the tale of the Outraged Operator
who Offered To Have An Artist's Legs Broken for not plugging said
operator's arcade "enough times" during a television interview
taped in front of the aforementioned operator's arcade. …Or the
Company Exec who Assured Us that The Check's In the Mail And All's
Right With The World just moments before one his subordinates
anonymously faxed us a newspaper clipping announcing the Company's
Demise Three Weeks Earlier, ...Or the anecdote involving the Sales
Veep who tried to throttle a Drunken Designer for Pushing All
The Wrong Buttons during a Holiday Party, ...Or the Short-Lived
Quality Control Checklist that said any game not Exactly Like
Pacman should not be produced, ...Or the Earnest Engineer who
was Unable to Convince Corporate Execs that the Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles would be Big Someday, ...Or the Legendary
Lunchtime Mustard Fights in the Park, ...Or the Traditional Lighting
of the Christmas Turkey, ...Or the Concerns Over Micro-Pixel Nudity,
...Or Dining With Jimmy Carter on a Cross Country Train Trip,
...Or The Four-Hour Fact-Finding and Fishing Expeditions at Possum's
Pub,
… but time and space limitations being what they are, I won't
be relating the stories here.
As for "nightmares"...
Reality Check: The Course Of True Game Design Never Runs Smooth.
As a designer I am primarily concerned with what is best for My
Game, period. In the real world, like it or not, manufacturers
and publishers have a tremendous list of priorities that will
almost always come before "My Game". Once you realize that broken
promises, lawsuits, indifference, incompetence, corporate politics
and hidden agendas will always be a part of dealing with big business,
you do what you have to do and try not to let the "nightmares"
get to you. In the end, if you're still having fun, you're on
the right track.
MT>
Tell us about the Game Refuge Emergency Arcade.
BC>
It's something we do just for the fun of it. We load up a dozen
or so Arcade games into a 1988 Chevy Step Van and visit local
street fairs throughout the summer months. Part of the money we
earn goes to local charities, and part goes towards our completely
over-the-top Halloween and Christmas parties.
MT>
You currently create titles for the Merit Megatouch game system.
Tennis Ace, Goal, Puckshot,
and soon to be released The Munsters. Why did you
decide to incorporate your talents within this format, and not
the traditional arcade coin-ops?
BC>
We are an idea-based group, not a technology-based group. As such,
we try not to limit ourselves to one platform or another. We looked
at the touchscreen industry several years ago, saw mostly card
games and trivia, and decided that the market could stand to use
a healthy dose of "Fun" (i.e., skill games). Look for information
about our two newest Merit Touchscreen games, scheduled to be
released later this fall, on our website: www.gamerefuge.com.
(Correction: The Munsters is not a Merit Touchscreen game,
it's a video slot machine we did for IGT.)
MT>
So, did you happen to program a backdoor or code into
The Munsters gambling device to allow us all to strike
it big?
BC>
Would that we could.
MT>
Game Refuge encourages attendees of its locale to wear costumes,
the company hosts an annual Halloween party? What's with all the
costumes?
BC>
Our Halloween Party / Bonfire / Costumed Bacchanal takes place
on what is affectionately known as "The Haunted-Half-Acre". The
hundred or so guests in attendance compete for custom-cast "Best
Costume" Trophies in a variety of Categories. What can I say?
We go a little nuts around this time of year. (It keeps us in
touch with our childhood.)
MT>
Please tell us about your exciting new light gun project.
BC>
Unfortunately, because the game has not yet been officially unveiled,
(Currently scheduled for the IAAPA Trade Show in Atlanta next
month), I can't tell you anything that you don't already know
from other sources: that is, that the game is called STAR
TREK VOYAGER-THE ARCADE GAME, that it looks "great", and
that players seem to love it.
